St. Landry democrat., 1887-09-03

THE HAMPToNs, August 2S.-"Wo-
mans Opportunity" was the subject OF
discourse by the Rev. T. De Witt Tai
mage, D. D., to-day; and his text, $50
God created man in His own image, the
image of God created He him; male and
female created He them'-Genesis, i, 81.
Following is the sermon in full:
In other words, God, who can make no
mistake, made man and woman for spe-
cifc work, and to move in particular
spheres-man to be regnant in his realm;
woman to be dominant in hers. The
boundary line between Italy and Swift
erland, between England and Scotland,
is not more thoroughly marked than this
distinction between the empire mascu-
line and the empire feminine. So en-
tirelv dissimilar are the fields to which
God called them, that you can no more
compare them than you can oxygen and
hydrogen, water and grass, trees and stars
All this talk about the superiority of one
sex TO the other sex is an everlasting
waste of ink and speech. A jeweler may
have a scale so delicate that he can weigh
the dust of diamonds; but where are the
scales so delicate that you can weigh in
them affection against affection, senti-
ment against sentiment, thought against
thought, soul against soul, mans
world against woman's world? You
come out with your stereotyped remark,
the man is superior to woman in intel
lect; and then | open on my desk the
swarthy, iron-typed, thunder bolted writ
ings of Harriet Martineau, and Elizabeth
Browning, and George Eliot. You come
on with your stereotyped remarks about
woman's superiority to man in the item of
affection but ask you where was there
more capacity to love than in John the dis
ciple, and Robert McCheyne the Scotch
man and John Summertield the Methodist,
and Henry Martin, the missionary. The
heart of those men was so large that after
YOU had rolled into it two hemispheres
there was room still left to marshal the
hosts of Heaven, and set up the throne of
the eternal Jehovah. | deny to man the
throne intellectual. | deny to woman
the throne atfectional. No human
phraseology will ever define the spheres,
while there is an intuition by which we
know when man is in his realm, and
when a woman is in her realm, and
when either of them is out of it. No
bungling legislature ought to attempt to
make definition or to say "This is the
line and that is the line" My theory is,
that if woman wants to vote, she ought
to vote, and that if a man wants to en-
broider and keep house, he ought to be
allowed to embroider and keep house.
There are masculine women and there
are effeminate men My theory is,
that you have no right to inter-
fere with any ones doing anything
that is righteous. Albany and Wash
ington might as well decree by legisla-
ton how high brown-thrasher should
fly, or how deep a trout should plunge,
as to try to seek out the height or the
depth of woman's duty. The question
of capacity will settle finally the whole
question, the whole subject. When a
woman is prepared to preach, she will
preach, and neither conference nor pres
bvtery can hinder her When woman
is prepared to move in highest CONNER
cial spheres, she will have great intlu-
ence on the exchange, and no boards of
trade can hinder her. l want woman to
understand that heart and brain can
overly any barrier that politicians may
set up, and that nothing can keep her
back or keep her down but the question
of incapacity.
There are women, I know, of most un-
desirable nature, who wander up and
down the CONTEMPLATING no homes of
their own, or forsaking their own homes
about their rights; and we
know very we'll that they themselves are |
fit neither to vote, nor fit to keep house. |
Their mission seems to be to humiliate |
the two sexes at the thought of what any
one of us might become. No one would .
want to live under the laws that such !
women would enact, or to have cast upon .
society the children that such women |
would raise. But I shall show you this
that the best rights that woman |
can own, she already has in her posses |
sion; that her position in this country
at this time is not one of commiseration,
but one of congratulation; that the
grandeur and power of her realm have
never yet been appreciated; that she
sits to-day on throne so high, that all the
thrones of earth piled on top of each other
would not make for her a fOotstool. Here is
the platform on which she stands. Away
down below it are the ballot-box and the
assemblage and the legis-
lative hall. Woman always has voted
and always will vote. Our great-grand
fathers thought they were by their votes
putting Washington into the presidential
chair. No. His mother, by the princ,
plies she taught him, and by the habits
she inculcated, made him President 1t
was Christian mothers hand dropping
the ballot when Lord Bacon wrote, and
Newton philosophical, and Alfred the
Great governed, and Jonathan Edwards
6hhndered OF judgment to come. How
many men there have been in high poit-
ical station, who would have been INSULT
Gent to stand the test to which their
moral principle was put, had it not been
for a wife's voice that encouraged them to |
do1ight, and wifes prayer that sounded
louder than the clamor of partisanship! |
Why, my friends, the right of suffrage,
astwe men exercise it, seems TO be a
feeble thing. You, Christian man,
come up to the ballot-box and you drop
your vote. Right after you comes a
libertine, or sot-the tf-scouring of |
the street-and he drops his vote; and
his vote counteracts yours. But If in
the quiet of home life daughter by her
demeanor, wife by hel in
- 4 r. Il